The Ghanaian economy obviously must be suffering as the National Lotto Receiver’s Union (NLRU) and the Lottery Marketing Companies (LMC) continue their sit down strike that has entered its second week.
The National Lottery Authority (NLA) is believed to contribute substantially to the national budget every year, from its operations. In the seventies, the NLA was contributing 25 per cent of the national budget.
But lotto kiosks throughout Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Koforidua and Takoradi as well as Tamale, have remained closed, giving way to the illegal banker-to-banker operations to thrive.
The NLA is reported to have formed task forces to arrest those engaged in the banker-to-banker operations. However, reports reaching The Herald say that all that the task forces have been doing is to arrest these operators, take money from them, and leave them to go.
A week ago, the NLRU and the LMC embarked upon a sit down strike as a result of the refusal of the NLA to revert to paying the 25 per cent commission it had been paying these associations for the sale of lotto coupons.
A month ago, the NLA unilaterally decided to reduce the 25 per cent commission to 20 per cent, saying that by so doing, it will be able to meet its overhead costs.
However, the NLRU and the LMC have objected to this move, saying that they pre-finance the operations of the NLA by paying before taking their products for sale, and that the five per cent reduction in their commission amounted to 30 per cent reduction in their income.
According to Mr. Kofi Frimpong, General Secretary of the NLRU, if the NLA is facing any financial challenges it is because management has been mismanaging the finances of the authority, and the solution to this must not be a reduction in their commission without their consent.
He said in the seventies, the Department of National Lottery (DNL), as it was called then, though operated draws once in a week, contributed 25 per cent of national budget, and had never had to be subvented by government.
However, the current administration headed by Mr. Kojo Andah, though operates seven draws in a week and in spite of the huge resources at its disposal, has grossly mismanaged the finances of the Authority to the extent that the NLA is saddled with huge debts.
Mr. Frimpong said the Director General (Kojo Andah) is reported to be taking a monthly salary of GH ¢14,000.00, while together with his colleagues, draws allowances of GH ¢ 150.00 each, on every draw day.
“So therefore, the Director General alone takes GH ¢ 17, 600 a month, excluding allowances he takes as a board member,” Mr. Frimpong alleged.
He said Mr. Andah and his colleague board members allegedly take GH ¢ 800.00 as sitting allowances, and it is believed that they sit twice in a week.
He further alleged that the board had not even been using the NLA conference rooms for their meetings, but rather that of Holiday Inn, a plush hotel near Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra, where huge sums of money are dissipated for services provided by the hotel.
According to him, there are reports that the NLA had not been able to pay accumulated prizes, to winners of its draws, of GH ¢13million since October 2010.
He said information reaching the NLRU indicated that the NLA owed SIMNET Ghana Ltd over $3 million, and is also indebted to the Prudential Bank in millions of cedis.
He said the NLA management allegedly misinformed the National Procurement Agency and the Ministry of Finance, that the “agreement between the NLA and SIMNET Ghana had expired, and managed to secure a loan of € 8 million from the SG-SSB for which they were granted permission to import 10,000 Lottery Terminals, fraudulently through sole-sourcing”.
He said the implication of this deal meant, that should SIMNET Ghana decide to take NLA to court and eventually win, government would be saddled with a huge judgment debt.
According to Mr. Frimpong, the NLRU was calling for investigation into the purchase of the Lottery Terminals, based on the information it had that the cost of the terminals and their accessories – cluster software, terminal software, communication software, the server, shipping and installation, had been grossly inflated to $8 million, and that a rough estimation puts the cost of everything to not more than $6 million.
He noted also that the terminals, some of which had been deployed, were faulty, causing lotto receivers to lose money which were not being refunded by the NLA.
He said instead of the terminals being procured from the company called EDITEL, noted for manufacturing lottery terminals, they were rather procured from INGENICO, a company noted for producing cash registers but not lottery terminals.
The General Secretary said that MTN charged GH¢ 12.00 per month for each lottery terminal that operated on the GPRS system, however NLA deducts GH¢ 15.00 from the commission payable to every lotto receiver who uses the GPRS.
According to him, the Kojo Andah management has managed to dissolve all staff unions and adopted a divide-and-rule tactics, when it assumed management of the NLA, in order to suppress the views of members of the NLA staff.
He maintained that the NLRU would continue its strike action until its grievances are addressed, cautioning government that the activities of the Kojo Andah management at the NLA would undermine the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government’s “Better Ghana Agenda”, if not checked.
He said that the management must, therefore, be probed, and replaced with a better management, specifically headed by a retired army officer.
When The Herald sought a reaction to the allegations leveled against Kojo Andah and his management, a young man claiming to be the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the NLA, who also claimed he holds a masters degree in communication, said that the one making the allegations should be made to prove their veracity, and that the NLA was not in position to waste its time on what he called absurdities.
He said that the allegations were not new, and that they (allegations) had been making the rounds in the media for a long time, but that cannot hurt the management of NLA.
